


Zero-Yen Smile

by Esselle



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Food Service, First Meetings, Fluff and Humor, Hinata Helps, M/M, McDonald's, kageyama cries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 13:32:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13718739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esselle/pseuds/Esselle
Summary: ' "Here," Hinata says, grabbing a napkin."I can—I c-can—""I got it," Hinata tells him kindly. He reaches forward to dab at the man's streaming eyes, and the man sadly and defeatedly stuffs another chicken nugget into his mouth."Wh-why," he asks, cheeks filled with nugget, "are you b-being so n-nice to me?" He looks up at Hinata, then—that serious, yet oddly sweet face red and blotchy and a mess of tears."Because you're sad," Hinata says.'--Hinata only met Kageyama on the night shift at his job flipping burgers, but somehow, he still feels like he needs to make him a little less sad.





	Zero-Yen Smile

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for Valentine's Day and wanted to upload it to AO3 as well! Based off [this tweet thread](https://twitter.com/sagechantweets/status/963801555861372928) with [Sagechan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ruined_earth_sagelord)!

The night shift at McDonald's usually gets pretty weird just by virtue of the fact that no one inside a McDonald's at 3 AM is really _normal,_ including the staff. When someone comes shuffling in at the Nothing Hours, on Valentine's Day no less, Hinata doesn't even look up. He's busy sweeping up in back, so Yamaguchi gets it.

"Good evening," Yamaguchi says, even though it's technically morning.

They had an argument about it when Hinata first started working there; Tsukishima insisted they should say "Good morning" after 12 AM, because that was scientifically correct. Hinata thought they should say "Good evening," until it was starting to get light out. Yachi thought they should all just say whatever they felt was right, and Yamaguchi backed Yachi because if he ever tried to take Tsukishima's or Hinata's side, they would guilt him about it for a week.

The first time Tsukishima said "Good morning" to a customer at 1:52 AM, the man had stopped counting his coins out and argued with Tsukishima about it still being night for twelve minutes straight, even when Tsukishima tried to give up. Then he had asked Tsukishima to give him the _zero-yen smile_ on the menu. Tsukishima had almost quit on the spot. Hinata still laughs about it, to this day.

He's actually in the midst of chuckling when he hears the customer rasp out, "Evening," to Yamaguchi, and it makes his laughter kinda… die. The man's voice is unintentionally hoarse, like he wasn't expecting it either, and he clears his throat before trying to talk normally again. "Can… can I have the twelve piece Chicken McNuggets meal? And—and a… a McMilk? I just want some milk."

"Your meal comes with a soft drink," Yamaguchi says, and Hinata can hear how kind his voice has become. He tries to peer over the deep fryer to see the customer. "Did you still want the milk?"

"Yes," the man replies. "Please."

Night shifts bring in the regular weirdos, but Hinata is getting a different vibe from this guy. Firstly, nobody who ever frequents a McDonald's in the dead of night has ever referred to menu items by their proper titles, McPrefix intact.

Secondly, although his sweatpants have that particular kind of "I haven't showered in twenty-four hours" grungy look, and he wears his hoodie like a shield, and his snapback is pulled so low over his forehead it's practically at his eyebrows, none of these things hide the fact that he's clearly been crying.

"Okay!" Yamaguchi says, acting like he hasn't even noticed the red eyes and nose. "That will be six hundred yen."

The man pays him dutifully, and Yamaguchi gives him his ticket to show when his order is called, even though he's the only actual customer inside the McDonald's. He stands in the waiting zone as Yachi loads little containers with the nuggets and deep fries the potatoes. Hinata continues absentmindedly sweeping, but most of his focus goes on sneaking glances at the sad guy, who stands staring intently at his receipt, fiddling with it.

He glances up—perhaps due to that sixth sense everyone seems to get when someone is staring at them with too much interest—and catches Hinata's eye.

Hinata almost drops his broom, but he tries to save it, turning his obvious staring into a bright and, he hopes, encouraging smile. He tries to pour some positive thoughts into it: _Everything's gonna be okay! Fast food by yourself at this inhuman hour on the most lovey-dovey day of the year isn't lonely, it's taking charge of your own destiny!_

The man does not smile back. Someone hits Hinata in the back of the head with a sheaf of paper and he yelps and scowls at Tsukishima. Tsukishima was recently promoted to assistant manager, and he acts like that makes him even better than he thought he was before being promoted.

"They're going to hold it against me if there's still fries on the floor tomorrow back here," Tsukishima tells him. "So stop flirting and start sweeping." He absolutely says this last part loud enough for Sad Hat Guy to hear, and Hinata squawks indignantly.

"I _am!"_ he fires back, sweeping vigorously enough to smack the broom twigs into Tsukishima's knees. Tsukishima's whole face pinches in distaste.

"Order number 487!" Yamaguchi calls, and the man startles a bit. He seems to have gotten caught up in watching Hinata and Tsukishima, but now he retrieves his order. He hesitates at the counter. "Can I help you with anything else?"

"Can…"

The man swallows, and then finally raises his eyes, looking about as sincere and desperate as Hinata has ever seen another person. His face is also properly visible now—he's actually maybe around Hinata's age, very dark eyes in a face that might seem serious, normally, if it wasn't currently so sad. He's… not bad looking, Hinata notes. He's cute, actually, the kind of cute that makes the sadness even harder to stand, like a puppy that's had its tail stepped on and can't understand why anyone would want to try and hurt it.

"Can I have a f-free smile?" the man chokes out.

Yamaguchi looks momentarily stunned, before he recovers. "Of course!" he says, pulling himself together and firing off one of his super patented hundred watt smiles at their customer, the warmest kind of smile anyone could be given.

The man's face crumbles in response. He looks like he's about to burst into tears again. Yamaguchi looks horrified.

But the man says, "Th-thanks." And then he's hurrying off to a table at the far end of the restaurant to consume his Happy Meal, which seems like the most awful kind of irony given the current situation.

Hinata, Yachi, and Tsukishima gather around the counter next to Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi seems to also be near tears.

"Why is he so _sad?"_ he asks.

"I don't know," Yachi says, sounding miserable. "I wish we could help him."

"There is no part of me that wants anything to do with this," Tsukishima says.

"I wish me, Yamaguchi, and Hinata could help him," Yachi says without missing a beat.

Hinata wishes this, too. But while Yachi is skittish, and Yamaguchi doesn't like prying into other people's business, Hinata has no such compunctions himself. He finishes sweeping, and counting the money in the till, and then he has a little bit of downtime given how quiet it is. He puts his plan into motion.

Very carefully, one foot in front of the other, tongue poking out between his lips, squinting from the effort of concentration, he carries a tray with every sauce flavor they carry stacked in one skyscraper column over to the far table where the man is sitting with his back to Hinata. As Hinata gets closer, he can see the faint shaking of the shoulders which means… oh, no, it means the man really is crying again.

Hinata is undeterred. He steels himself, and continues. Just as carefully, he slides the tray and the tower of sauce onto the table in front of the man, whose shoulders hitch as Hinata sits down opposite him.

"Hi!" Hinata says cheerfully. "Don't mind me." The man appears to be trying his hardest to do just that. He ducks his head very low, hat hiding his face from view. "A lot of the time, people say that we don't give them enough sauce. So, I brought you one of every kind! Also—" He sets a little white paper cup down onto the table, filled with: "—extra ketchup."

Hinata can see Yamaguchi and Yachi watching them from behind the counter. They both seem to be trying to tell him to stop. He pretends he doesn't understand.

The man is utterly silent for a long moment. Then, he scoots the ketchup closer to himself and dips a fry in it.

"Thanks," he says, his voice thick in the way that only comes from crushing despair and an accumulation of cry-snot.

"Don't mention it!" Hinata says. "Try some of these, too, with the nuggets." Now Hinata spreads out his wares—he makes a ninja noise ("Hah- _chah!")_ and karate chops the sauce tower, which scatters all over the tray. Like a magician, he fans them out across the plastic, displaying them all in order of mildest to strongest flavor.

Again, the man makes no move for several seconds. Then his hand hovers over the row… deliberating on Creamy Ranch… before finally shifting over to Smoky Barbecue. A classic. Hinata nods approvingly. But Hinata has given him the world to choose from, and soon he hesitantly reaches back for the Ranch.

"Yeah, try it!" Hinata says. "I brought 'em for you, and we've got more if you want them."

Eventually, the guy just opens up each sauce packet. He uses one for each chicken nugget, and every time he opens a new one, he cries a little bit harder. Hinata goes to get some extra napkins to double as tissues. He slides them over to the man, but when the man reaches for them, they both realize the problem—his hands are both covered in grease and sauce.

"Here," Hinata says, grabbing a napkin.

"I can—I c-can—"

"I got it," Hinata tells him kindly. He reaches forward to dab at the man's streaming eyes, and the man sadly and defeatedly stuffs another chicken nugget into his mouth.

"Wh-why," he asks, cheeks filled with nugget, "are you b-being so n-nice to me?" He looks up at Hinata, then—that serious, yet oddly sweet face red and blotchy and a mess of tears.

"Because you're sad," Hinata says. He points at his name tag on his uniform shirt, now that the man is looking at him. "I'm Hinata, by the way!"

The man sniffs loudly. "I'm… Kageyama."

Hinata wasn't actually expecting to get a name back. He smiles. "Do you have a favorite sauce? Mine's probably Sweet N' Sour, but Wasabi Mayo is good when they have it!"

"Ranch," Kageyama says softly. Makes sense, he did go for that one first. But, Hinata thinks, it's always nice to shake things up once in awhile!

"Hey, Kageyama," he asks idly, "why're you so sad?" There's a huge clatter from the other side of the restaurant as, presumably, Yachi drops a tray in shock at his audacity. But Kageyama had asked for a smile, and Kageyama had taken his offerings of ketchup and dipping sauce. Kageyama needs someone to reach out to him, Hinata can tell.

His voice is tiny when he responds. "I got dumped."

"Awww, man," Hinata says. Then he realizes. "On the day before Val—" He sees Kageyama cringe and winces himself. "Sorry."

"It's…" Kageyama sighs. "It's okay. I knew it was going to happen."

Hinata frowns. "How?"

"Because I knew…" Kageyama says, "I knew I wasn't the person they wanted. I always knew that."

Hinata thinks this might be one of the saddest things he's ever heard anyone say. He doesn't think he can make that better, not in a single McDonald’s visit. But he knows something that might help, a little bit.

"Kageyama," he says, "I think you need a good therapy session."

Kageyama blinked at him. "I don't know any therapists."

"False!" Hinata exclaimed. "Step into my office, please!"

"Hinata," Tsukishima warns, already knowing what's coming, "you know you're not supposed to open it up after hours—"

"Well, then, I guess they shouldn't have given me the keys," Hinata singsongs. Kageyama is standing, looking bewildered, not moving. Hinata grabs his hand and tugs him along. "Come on, come on!"

Kageyama certainly does not get less bewildered when Hinata leads him through a brightly colored door and clicks on a couple lights, to reveal they're standing in the restaurant's Play Place. Hinata kicks off his shoes excitedly and motions for Kageyama to do the same. Once de-shoed, Hinata ushers him towards the brightly colored tunnel that leads into the rest of the maze.

"I'm… not gonna fit," Kageyama says.

"You will if you believe hard enough," Hinata says.

This is not entirely true. Kageyama _barely_ fits, and they spend a good few minutes huffing and puffing, trying to squeeze him through a series of plastic tubes made for six year olds.

"I'm gonna fart," Kageyama wheezes.

"Don't you dare," Hinata tells him, pushing him from behind. "My face is _in_ your ass right now."

"Thought that tall guy… told you to stop flirting," Kageyama says, voice strained with the effort it takes to scrape himself through the tube.

"That's—hey!" Hinata says. He flicks Kageyama's thigh. "You're supposed to be sad!"

"Aren't you, like, trying to cheer me up?"

"Yeah, but you're not supposed to make fun of me."

"You're kinda easy to make fun of, though," Kageyama says. With a huge sigh of relief, he escapes from the tunnel, into a netted area that is still small, but not quite as restricting. He collapses into it as Hinata tumbles out next to him.

"Hey, you're the guy who started crying over a bunch of nuggets," Hinata says, flopping down onto the net next to Kageyama. Instead of getting offended, Kageyama snorts.

"Yeah, I know."

"Do you feel better, then?" Hinata asks.

"No," Kageyama says, staring up at the Play Place ceiling. "I still feel like total shit."

"That's fair," Hinata concedes. "Can I ask you something else?"

"Sure," Kageyama says.

"Why'd you stay with them?" Hinata asked. "If you knew it wasn't going to work out?"

Kageyama breathes in deep, then out slow. He puts his hands over his face, and his breathing gets shakier again, and Hinata doesn't push him further. He just lays there next to Kageyama quietly, staring up at the ceiling. Hinata knows he's pushed a lot already, but he really does wonder, too. Maybe that's rude of him, or insensitive, but he wants to know—because Kageyama must. And it doesn't make sense, to Hinata.

Kageyama takes his hands away from his face, and says, "I thought, I might as well. Because I don't really know who else would want to be with me, either."

Hinata wrinkles his nose. "That's stupid."

"Oy," Kageyama says, "what kind of therapist calls their patient stupid?"

"I'm not an _actual therapist,"_ Hinata says, as though this has at any point not been obvious, like they aren't two twenty-somethings hiding in a public children's play center in the middle of the night. "Anyways, I'm still right. There's _so many people._ How do _you_ know none of them are going to want to be with you? There's like a billion people in Japan, at least."

"How do _you_ know any of them want to be with me?" Kageyama fires back.

"I don't," Hinata says. "But that doesn't make the other thing true, either. Besides, I'd be with you."

Kageyama opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He opens it once more, but nothing comes out, for a long time. Then he says, "You don't even know me."

"Doesn't matter," Hinata says, "you're still wrong."

"You little—" Kageyama says, taking a swipe at him. Hinata rolls out of the way and cackles.

"Listen, you seem pretty cool," Hinata tells him. "Like, dumb, and also kind of _not_ cool, but still cool. And, you're cute. No matter what the reason was for her dumping you… she's missing out."

"Shut up," Kageyama says, looking utterly embarrassed.

"All I'm saying is, not a lot of people agree to hang out with me in the Play Place after lock up," Hinata says. "So, I can tell you're cool."

"How many… how often do you ask people to hang out with you in here?" Kageyama asks. To his credit, he seems only slightly weirded out.

"That's my secret," Hinata says. "But we should probably leave now, or else Tsukki will get all mad."

They crawl their way to the big slide, which is mercifully large enough that Kageyama can get inside it. He pauses at the top.

"He," he says.

"Huh?" Hinata asks.

"Not 'she'." Kageyama shakes his head. "Got dumped by a guy." He departs, sneakers squeaking up an unholy racket as he scoots down the slide, slowly disappearing from view.

Hinata gapes at the empty space he just left, before throwing himself forward on his stomach in a fashion that is regrettably very well-practiced, smoothly flying down the slide on his belly like a seal on ice. Kageyama is still sitting at the end, and Hinata collides with his back.

"Kageyama!" he yelps.

"Wh—"

"Can I hug you?!"

"Oh," Kageyama says. "Okay."

Hinata flings his arms around his waist and squashes his cheek against Kageyama's back. "I have another question!"

"Of course you do," Kageyama sighs. It’s more indulgent than exasperated.

"Will you be my McValentine?" Hinata shouts into Kageyama's soft sweatshirt.

Kageyama freezes. "Hinata…"

"It can just be until you leave tonight," Hinata tells him. "Or for today, or… for however long! I'll be your awkward rebound until you find the person you really wanna be with. But I really, really don't think you should feel like no one wants to be with you, ever. Okay?!"

Kageyama has twisted around to stare at him, wide-eyed. "You are… a _dumbass."_

"I know," Hinata says, "so how about it?"

He thinks Kageyama is going to say no—which would be totally understandable, but maybe at least he'll walk out of here thinking about that one weird guy who developed a crush on him inside of thirty minutes, and maybe it’ll make him feel better—but then.

Then, Kageyama _smiles,_ just a tiny, little bit. And nods.

Hinata's mouth falls open. "Zero-yen smile," he whispers.

*

It turns out to be worth a million. A couple months later, Hinata is getting hassled by some big high school kids—it happens, because people like to think they're above others, and who better than the tiny kid behind the McDonald's counter, who can't say a word back to them? They've cut the line, knocked over a display, and flicked his hat off his head.

"Hey," one of them asks, after they've changed their order for the sixth time, insisting he took it down wrong again, "how about a free smile?"

Before he can respond, someone lands a heavy hand on the kid's shoulder.

They turn, to see Kageyama standing behind them, tall and broad and wearing an expression on his face that would make a serial killer weep.

"I've got a free smile for you," he says, his lips stretching in a horrific grimace no human would ever call a smile, "and you can chew on my fucking fist, if you're still hungry after that."

They flee, without so much as an apology, but Hinata doesn't mind. He just clears their order from the register and beams up at his boyfriend.

"Welcome to McDonald's!" he says, and Kageyama's expression softens all the way. "What can I get for you?"

"The usual," Kageyama says, which means a salad, because Kageyama is actually on a very strict diet—he plays sports! He really is cool. "And a real dinner, when you get off work." Hinata nods excitedly. 

"Coming right up!"

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (belated) Valentine's Day! This is also my 100th fic on AO3, but not my 100th KageHina, so not celebrating just yet... X'D
> 
> @beanjournal on Tumblr drew [the cutest fan art](https://beanjournal.tumblr.com/post/171001246719/fan-art-for-the-adorable-mcvalentinesday-fic-by) for this fic!!! 
> 
> [I'm [@esselley](http://esselley.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, [@Esselle_hq](https://twitter.com/Esselle_hq) on Twitter]

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Zero-Yen Smile by Esselle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13958619) by [SkateIntoMyHeart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkateIntoMyHeart/pseuds/SkateIntoMyHeart)




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